Having problems with Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 Crashing?

I know, I know… I said I wouldn't be going back there, but I did...

Something about me wanting to help others in the Windows Live Movie Maker forums; I don't understand why I do it. It's almost self torture to know that Windows Live Movie Maker has all these problems and that if there's no one in the forums the users are just getting jacked around.

It's been a few months and the problems with Windows Live Movie Maker persist. The crashes, the codecs, Windows Live Movie Maker not being able to start at all… and the Microsoft techs working the forums seem helpless at best. Sometimes I wonder if they actually read the peoples submissions at all before they throw a canned respons at them about collecting and sending in a bunch system specifications [to never have returned].

So, here's my list of recommendations if you're having problems...

So what are the top things to check with Windows Live Movie Maker when you're having problems with it…this list is beased on simple solutions to more tedious… PITA stuff.

Resources

Windows Live Movie Maker is horrible with the management of system memory resources.

The more you add to Windows Live Movie Maker the more memory the application uses; even more so when you have a large video you're putting efforts in to create. Windows Live Movie Maker can easily consume 1.5Gb of memory for creating a video. This can be proven just by loading a large video and then scrolling down in the story board; Windows Live Movie Maker puts EVERYTHING in memory.

This affects it's ability to read, recognize, render, save and export to YouTube and Facebook; everything. It's already been confirmed in this forum that depending on what you're working on, and how big your video is, you may not be able to save your project or export [render] it for a WMV, DVD, YouTube or Facebook.

This is a good example video:

Windows Live Movie Maker is really bad about handling system resources and can cause plenty of issues. To check on this, if you run in to issues with Windows Live Movie Maker, pull up the Task Manager and see how much Windows Live Movie Maker [the application] is taking/using from your system. If it's using more memory than anything else, that could be your problem…

The standard response from Microsoft techs is to adjust your PAGEFILE; this is to account for the lack of handling system resources properly. You can make an attempt adjust your page file… as a recommendation— In the Initial Size box, enter a value equal to one and a half times the amount of the computer's installed RAM. In the Maximum Size box, enter a value equal to twice the amount of the Initial Size value.

If you're working with LARGE Video files, ensure you zoom IN all the way out to prevent Windows Live Movie Maker from loading all the video clips in to memory; refer to the video clip above.

If you need to SPLIT a movie in half or in to multiple parts, you can do this...this will help Windows Live Movie Maker deal with resources a little better and help narrow down where the problem video clip is…

Display drivers; if not already, you should visit WINDOWS UPDATE and see if there are any updates to your video card. This might help you. It's not an absolute, but it has helped others; based on responses from the Windows Live Movie Maker forum.

What you need to know about codecs, they dictate whether or not the audio, video or both are recognized properly by Windows Live Movie Maker. And just because Windows Media Player can play the file doesn't mean anything to Windows Live Movie Maker. But it's important to have the right codecs installed or updated. And Windows Live Movie Maker offers no assistance at all in resolving the issues of codecs. And thinking that Windows Media Player might find and download the right codecs is in the 2% of success.

Windows Live Movie Maker has very little in the way of innate ability to read media files. If you're having issues/problems with audio and/or video on your media, it could be your installed codecs, or the lack of, or maybe you need to update your codecs; ultimately, it's all about the codecs.

Audio and Video, both, require current codecs to play the proper media [correctly].

As a suggestion, you can download the most ubiquitous codecs yourself and installing them fairly easily... They're both FREE, REPUTABLE and updated regularly.

If you're having issues with Windows Live Movie Maker and you can't find the codec you need, or one that'll work, you may need to convert the video to AVI and then import it in to Windows Live Movie Maker.

As a suggestion, I use Video Converter Factory, a video converter that handles lots of different video types [100+] and audio and it's super simple to use. Ultimately, if you can find the codec that works, great; if not, or if your pressed for time, here's a FREE option to convert the data.

I'm not stating that these things are going to fix your problem, but it's things that the Windows Live Movie Maker forums are already telling users to make an attempt. And in lieu of spoon feeding users on try this, try that, now try this type stuff; it's all right here.

Again, the items are listed in an order from easy to check/fix to serious PITA stuff.